Booker Prize 2025: Complete list of winners

David Szalay’s Flesh has claimed the 2025 Booker Prize for Fiction, marking a significant moment for a novelist who has long deserved major recognition. The novel, which explores the messy intersection of desire, technology, and modern existence, represents exactly the kind of ambitious, unsettling work that the prestigious International Booker Prize—often regarded as the world’s most important literary award—typically champions. Szalay’s victory caps off a year of exceptional shortlisted titles, all of which grappled with urgent questions about how we live now.

What makes Szalay’s win particularly resonant is how Flesh refuses easy answers or comfortable narratives. The novel’s unflinching examination of contemporary life strikes at something raw and urgent, a quality that clearly resonated with this year’s judging panel. The Booker Prize, which has been awarded annually since 1969 and remains one of the most prestigious honors in English-language literature, has consistently sought out voices that push boundaries and challenge readers to think differently about the world around them.

As we dive deeper into this year’s winners and finalists, Szalay’s achievement reminds us why we watch the Booker Prize announcements so closely—because the books that win often become the books we’re still talking about years later.

Fiction

• Flesh by David Szalay